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Conditions were perfect for a showdown in the Senate over the judicial appointment process. Democrats had managed to convince half the population that the filibuster is some sort of constitutional right endowed by our Creator, and that Bill Frist and those evil Republicans were fixin’ to “nuke” the constitution by ending the misuse of the filibuster, used here only to block the confirmation of qualified nominees on the sole basis of the DNC litmus test. Too bad this half of the population has never read the constitution. A shame they don’t know that their litmus test is a litmus test....

9 Republicans Who Will Make or Break the Constitutional Option Vote

WASHINGTON - Seven Republican senators will determine the outcome of a showdown this week between the president and Congress — and a minority within it — over who is going to shape the federal courts. Barring any unforeseen developments, these are the lawmakers in the make-or-break position when it comes to deciding whether to allow a Senate minority to block a president's nominees for the federal bench. The senators are Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John Warner of Virginia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Sununu of New Hampshire....

Fading into the background Let us pause a moment to recall that Congress busies itself with matters other than Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. Some of them, in fact, affect quite a lot of people. One vote you might have missed last week said a lot about what the next couple of years will be like on Capitol Hill. The vote involved the fundamental question of how Congress balances tax cuts against spending. During the Senate's annual budget debate, which sets guidelines for the year's spending bills, some senators pushed a measure to require that any new tax cuts be...

By CLARKE CANFIELD, Associated Press Sen. Susan Collins said Thursday that she is largely satisfied with the Army's effort to provide armor for Humvees in Iraq, but that more needs to be done to ensure that trucks and other vehicles have protection as well. Collins said in an interview with The Associated Press that she was frustrated by what she saw as the Defense Department's lack of planning and slow response to concerns about the lack of protective armor for vehicles and soldiers in Iraq. Collins said she is encouraged by Army Gen. George Casey's order that soldiers in Iraq...

WASHINGTON, March 16 - The Senate endorsed oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge today, giving President Bush and others who favor exploration of the Alaska wilderness a major victory. The 51-to-49 vote was in favor of a budget resolution that assumes revenues of some $5 billion from drilling fees over the next decade, with the federal government and the state of Alaska to split the money. While this afternoon's vote is not the final word on the issue, it nevertheless made drilling in the wilds of Alaska - an idea favored by the oil industry for decades and fiercely...

Senator Susan Collins of Maine alerts the enemy to US Troop movements.Advertiser Democrat of Norway, Maine by John Governale GREATER OXFORD HILLS - Oxford Hills families of 133d Engineer Guardsmen are thrilled and appalled. The are thrilled, of course, because their soldiers are coming home. But many families here are disturbed and upset that Senator Susan Collins announced Monday on national television specifically which days the unit would be in the air, even specifying that the first group would fly "Wednesday afternoon." A spokesperson from the senator's press office, however, said that Senator Collins had been given the information by...

If Chief Justice William Rehnquist retires next year, President Bush likely won't face a tough battle over his successor. So reports the New York Times, citing consultant Howard Wolfson and "other Democrats." The Times attributes this to the Democrats' desire to soften their image as pro-abortion zealots. The court has a 6-3 majority in favor of Roe v. Wade, and Chief Justice Rehnquist is among the dissenters. Why should the Democrats spend political capital merely to run up the score? Anyway, this is a battle the Democrats would almost certainly lose. With only 45 senators..., they would need the support...

Many 9/11 Families Opposed to Collins' Bill By Peter Gadiel Dec 13, 2004, 08:57 Editor, Sen. Collins persists in claiming that her intelligence reform bill passed because of "the overwhelming support of family members of 9-11 victims." Our organization, 9/11 Families for a Secure America wants to tell the people of Maine that her claim is false. The members of 9/11 FSA, all of whom are relatives of 9/11 victims, represent the families of 300 of those victims. We vociferously opposed the Collins bill in numerous Capitol Hill press conferences, a fact which cannot have escaped Sen. Collins notice. To...

The intel-reform bill may not make us safer, but Congress averted a disaster. The sky isn't falling after all. Congressional leaders have reached a deal on reforming the intelligence community. Sen. Susan Collins has come around to Rep. Duncan Hunter's position on protecting the military chain of command. This deal not only props up the sky but also protects Congress from feeling it'll have blood on its hands should al Qaeda pull off another deadly attack inside the United States. What's more the we must do something crowd can go home now. Congress is doing what the 9/11 Commission wanted....

...Kerry accused the Bush administration of failing adequately to police the six million cargo containers flowing into the country each year.... This absurdity, in fact, conceals one of the great, low-budget successes of the war on terrorism. A rule was instituted overnight requiring shippers to deliver an electronic manifest of every container to U.S. Customs 24 hours before it's loaded aboard a ship in a foreign port. The info is fed through a classified, rule-based screening program to identify "high-risk" cargos, shippers or handlers, with the targeted containers undergoing X-ray or physical search before loading.... All this was done... for...

Senator Susan Collins of Maine is shepherding through the Senate the most sweeping reform of the intelligence community in more than 50 years. North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole has been busy shaping the defense appropriations bill and making the case for the war in Iraq on the Senate floor. Maine Senator Olympia Snowe and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas got their plan to beef up air-cargo security passed while Senator Lisa Murkowski champions the need to protect the nation's energy security. All of this has escaped the feminists' notice because these women senators share the stigma of being Republican....

...After intense work, Sens. Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Susan Collins have introduced comprehensive legislation that differs on only a few matters with the Commission recommendations. The Senate leadership has pursued the same bipartisan course that enabled the Commission's five Democrats and five Republicans to achieve unanimity on comprehensive and decisive findings and reform recommendations. The House is following suit with somewhat different legislation and there is no reason now why differences cannot be resolved in a Senate-House Conference and a landmark bill presented to the president before the election recess. This accomplishment, to paraphrase Mark Twain, will gratify our...

Tuesday, August 17, 2004 The real national zoo Posted: August 17, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Mychal Massie © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com The Cleveland Metropark Zoo has two, as does the Los Angeles Zoo. Wild animal parks tend to have more, as does the San Diego Wild Animal Park, which is home to over 35. And while America's only national zoo has none at present, the Republican side of the government in the city in which it rests has plenty. The difference is the rhinoceroses found in our nation's zoos walk on four legs, mostly mind their own business, are not easily influenced (and...

Collins, Snowe help stall energy measure By BART JANSEN, Portland Press Herald Writer Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. WASHINGTON — Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were among a half-dozen Republicans who refused Friday to limit debate on energy legislation, a move that threatens to kill a top priority of President Bush and the Republican congressional leadership. But after the Senate vote that allowed limitless debate, neither side declared the bill dead. Democrats and the handful of Republicans who supported the filibuster said spending projects and other legislation could convince wavering lawmakers to switch their votes. "The auction...

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 10 (CSM) - Critics on Capitol Hill are taking a hard look at several lucrative U.S. contracts to rebuild war-damaged Iraq (news - web sites). When Susan Collins was just a staffer in the United States Senate, she used to worry about fat government contracts being awarded in secret. Now Collins is a US Senator--and she can finally do something about it. Senator Collins is drawing a bead on contracts in Iraq, where the US has begun pouring in billions of dollars to repair war damage and rebuild the country. There are charges in the press that...

The Right should not be joining the Left in the blacklisting of MCI. Candidates and groups on the left have long made attacks on corporate America a staple of their populist appeals. Whether it is Jesse Jackson shaking down corporations for minority contracts, Ralph Nader blasting big business on environmental issues, or the perennial management-labor disputes, the battle between the left and business interests remains at the forefront of American politics. What is new, however, is conservatives taking up the cause. Washington Post columnist James Glassman, former U.S. Congressman and MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough, and Citizens Against Government Waste, all...

Nine members of the Senate's committees on Armed Services and Intelligence will travel to Iraq and the surrounding region next week to assess U.S. operations amid concerns of growing Iraqi resistance to the occupation. Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican who chairs the Armed Services Committee, in a statement on Thursday, said the trip will focus on U.S. military and reconstruction missions after the war that ousted Saddam Hussein. It is to include the threats forces are facing from Iraqi resistance and the ongoing search for weapons of mass destruction. Also going on the trip are Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat...

WASHINGTON — Thousands of Maine families with low or moderate incomes won't qualify for the $400 child tax credit that more-affluent families will receive under the tax cut signed by President Bush. Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe and congressional Democrats criticized Republican congressional leaders Thursday for refusing to make low-wage earners eligible for the increased child tax credit. In the tax-cut compromise struck by negotiators in a House-Senate conference committee, the increased credit was made available only to families that earned enough to pay taxes. In Maine, that means the parents of an estimated 40,000 children won't benefit from the credit....

In a key step toward unravelling the secret history of the Cold War, the U. S. Senate last week released 50-year-old executive hearings on subversion and internal security matters conducted by Sen. Joe McCarthy (R.-Wis.). Running to more than 4,000 pages, these hearings are crammed with backstage data on a host of once-torrid issues—including controversial McCarthy sessions on the Voice of America, United States Information Agency libraries, State Department personnel, and the Army Signal Corps installation at Fort Monmouth, N.J., to name a few. The last is of special interest as it was the prelude to the famous Army-McCarthy fracas...